8RDA+ video problems

[ConcoursAL]

I just put together a mostly new system. 8RDA+, XP2100 TBred, Ti 4400, & Kingston Value PC2700. Everthing is fine in the 133MHz bus world. When I go to 166Mhz with multipliers to keep the CPU normally clocked, my video card freezes during the "Nature" section of 3DMark. I found this out after some freezes playing RTCW spurred further investigation. Any ideas? I'm not pushing the system at all right now. Just trying to run everything at spec.

FWIW, I did do the "normal" overclocking and got expected stable results at 13x166 that everyone seems to be getting with recent New Egg purchases. As far as I can tell, my problem seems to be in the AGP world and only rears it's ugly head when the GPU is being pushed.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[MichaelD]

What is your AGP setting at in the BIOS? It should be on either Auto or 66MHz. Do you have AGP 4x enabled? Do you have Assign IRQ for AGP enabled?

What brand/wattage PS are you running? You have some fairly "hungry" components there.

 

[ConcoursAL]

AGP is set to auto and is running at 4x according to Display Properties under Xp. I'm not sure about Assign IRQ. I'll have to look when I get home from work.

A new ANTEC TRUE430 powering everything, so I don't think that is the problem. Is there some voltage adjustment I'm missing. I haven't messed with anything other than the CPU voltage which I needed to bump up to 1.65 when I have things at 13X166.

When the "Nature" section of 3DMark is going south, I see random blobs of stuff on the scene like a buffer is being corrupted. This precedes a lock up and self reboot. Everything is hunky dory when I go back to 133.

 

[MichaelD]

You have an awesome PS. I have the same one. 🙂 It's not lack of power.

It sounds like it could be system memory since it's that Kingston Value stuff....no offense, butyou need to get real ram.

One other question. Did you do a clean install when you got this board, or did you just plug in your HD and go?

 

[ConcoursAL]

I did a clean install of XP. XP, Epox drivers, SP1, then newset MSI video stuff. I haven't yet upgraded the motherboard BIOS.

Is there any way to test my RAM? I'd like to return it to New Egg if it turns out to be the culprit.

 

[MichaelD]

Memtest

Waitaminute...test your memory yes...but you used the Epox drivers? Go to NVidia.com and DL the latest unified driver pack for the NForce2. Load those up and try again.

 

[ConcoursAL]

I'll give that a try. Thanks.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: ConcoursAL
I'll give that a try. Thanks.

You're welcome. Try the drivers first and see if that does it, then test the memory. While you're at it, remove and reseat the videocard and the memory...you never know. 🙂

 

[k1114]

Try bumping up the ram voltage a notch.

 

[ConcoursAL]

New BIOS + new MB drivers = slight improvement. I still see some blips in the rendered Nature scene, but the machine isn't locking up 3-5 seconds into the test like it did before. RAM voltage increase didn't have any effect. I seem to be OK running at 150Mhz.

 

[tapir]

kingston RAM is decent stuff... do run Memtest though, and if you get errors RMA for a replacement. the stuff should be capable of running at the speed its rated at.

 

[Aiden]

you might want to reinstall directx, i have always had problems when doing updates with directx not working well unitil i reinstalled it.

beyond that,check your bios settings. agp freq should be 66mhz,auto might be having a problem<not likely>. also disable your 8x agp support,as your video card doesnt support it.

other then that,agree with the others start running programs like prime95 and memtest to try to find errors. could be you need more voltage through your cpu or memory. might want to relax the memory timings as well.

i would think your kingston should run at 166mhz with no errors,as its rated for it.